Hope Emily Allen Papers - Preliminary Guide

Copyright 2000 by Special Collections Department, Bryn Mawr College
Library

March 2000
Last Updated:
November 18, 2013

Extent

Total Boxes: 7
Linear Feet: 10.50

Administrative Information

Provenance

Unknown.

Ownership & Literary Rights

The Hope Emily Allen Papers are the physical property of the Special Collections
Department, Bryn Mawr College Library. Literary rights, including copyright,
belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns.

Hope Emily Allen, noteworthy medieval scholar, is best known for her research
on the 14th century English mystic Richard Rolle and for her discovery of the
Book of Margery Kempe. Born in Oneida, New York, Allen spent a great
deal of her childhood there and later also lived in Niagara Falls, Canada. Allen
completed her undergraduate studies at Bryn Mawr College in 1905 with special
interests in the study of Middle English literary texts. The next year she completed
graduate work, also at Bryn Mawr, in English literature and Greek, earning a
master's degree. Allen had great concern for women's values and identity and
continued to fight for these issues throughout her life. After Bryn Mawr, she
went to Radcliffe to begin studying for her Ph.D, during which time she enrolled
at Cambridge University in 1910 for a semester to study English literature.
That semester was eventually elongated to a period of three years.

Allen's time in Britain in the early 1900s allowed her to make a great number
of personal and academic associations, as well as experience European culture.
During her time in England, she pursued her two lifelong goals: medieval scholarship
and feminism. Allen described herself as an "independent scholar," and she never
accepted an academic teaching appointment. This independence allowed her to
research more freely, so that she could closely examine texts that had not received
recognition before. Her writing falls into three overlapping groups: her early
work on the Ancrene Riwle, her insight into the study of Richard Rolle,
and her research on the cultural background of the Book of Margery Kempe.
Themes in her work include the spirituality of women in the late Middle Ages
(Ancrene Riwle), contradictions and impossibilities in the work of Richard
Rolle, and ideas on the religious life of late-medieval women in the Book
of Margery Kemp.

Allen later returned to the United States, living in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where
she continued to pursue her research and writing. She eventually returned to
her hometown of Oneida, New York, and spent the last years of her life at the
Mansion House in Kentwood, where she died in 1960.

The papers consist primarily of research notes by Allen, photostats and typescripts
of manuscripts, and professional correspondence. Topics include the Book
of Margery Kempe, the Ancrene Riwle,and Richard Rolle.